Someone suggested to me to take a look at the London Plus Railpass as it now includes travel to Bath and coupons for the Gatwick Express.
I'm planning a trip for January and I will be in London for 2 weeks. The pass is valid for 8 days so I would make sure that my 2 day trips (I want to do Bath and Cambridge) are within that time frame. From the National Rail website, I found fares of 20GBP for Bath and 25GBP for Cambridge, traveling at the cheapest times. So that's about 90-100$ of rail tickets if bought in advance (I understand it can get a lot more expensive if bought the same day at the rail station).
I was planning on taking the Southern Rail from Gatwick for about 40$ roundtrip. Now I could take the Gatwick Express instead (even faster) although it's not totally clear if I can use those outside of the 8 days when the pass is valid. If anyone knows, that would be useful (I'll email the RS people to make sure anyways...)
The pass is 145$ + shipping vs about 140$ for rail&transportation from airport.
What are your thoughts on this? I think it might give me a peace of mind to know that I won't have to wait in line for tickets and that I'm not stuck with a certain travel time. I know that if I buy with Rick Steves, I also get a discount of the travel store, which would be good since I need a new suitcase.